Drowning Is
by after.a.hard.day
Summary: Want and Needs. The line between. Dreaming and Reality, there's not always a difference. KakaSakuGaa .written for mismatched competition.


**title: **drowning is  
**pairing:** KakaSakuGaa. (slight SasuSaku)  
**summary:** Want and Needs. The line between. Dreaming and Reality, there's not always a difference.  
**rating:** M (as always)  
**notes:** I don't like this. It feels wrong. I FEEL UNCLEAN. But seriously, this feels without direction and I am greatly displeased with it. Written for the Mismatched Competition, link on my bio pagem sign up and test yourself.  
**standard disclaimer applies.**

_drowning is;_

**saprò.**

_i. _

The hands come around her waist and she leans back, her legs stilling in her swing_thudthud_ motion. Hands rose up into her hair, pulling through, tilting her head to the side and warm breath hit her neck.

"Sa-Sasuke," she'd moan and their would be a grunt in response.

He'd leave after they made love (lovefuckscrewedeachotherover_again_), he always did. Nor did she want him to stay, neither of them had the excuse really anyway. He was a missing-nin after all. She was still loyal. It wasn't lust nor was it love, it wasn't anything. Just meetings and leavings and comings and goings.

Pass the time.

_i. _

Fast, it'd always been fast, standing on the edge of his sand, it'd move like it was his path. It _was _his path.

He sweeps his arm out, like a tidal wave, his ocean, his resonance goes out, fast and ripples. The water drowns the land, but not the time, this time the land drowns itself.

"Gaara you don't have the chakra you used to, you can't keep doing that." Kankurou mutters as the sand rises up and up. Both Gaara's hands are outstretched now, so high above him and the sand is… the sand is…

There is a stab of pain through his chest. The sand falls, a crash and a echoing _thump_ as the sand returns back to itself.

Kankurou stands beside him and braces a hand to his shoulder, Gaara for a second leans back, feeling the mortality he wasn't supposed to have.

But he'll keep trying because some how it'll all come back, he'll make it come back. He needed it, he _needed_ it.

_i. _

His hands flick the pages, old, yes, fading a little yellow on the edges where his fingers had skimmed so many times, he opens a page that he knows so well. He grins a little.

"Kakashi-sensei, still reading that?" Naruto teased. Kakashi sighed.

Yes he was still reading it, still doing the same ol', same ol'. He had too, he was getting too old to change. People could say it was never too late to learn, but Kakashi knew different, the learning came from the willingness in the heart, and Kakashi had no will to change, no want or need, nor could he be quiet ashamed enough.

So Kakashi flicked the pages that were getting warn down. Sighed a little -- yes he was still reading it, he didn't want to read anything else.

**to know**

_drowning is;_

**vedrò**

_ii. _

She tipped the bottle of water over her head and shook her head, loving the feeling of it running through her hair.

"You've been hanging around Naruto too much," Gaara observed. Sakura glared.

"Oh, why do you think that?"

"You act like a dog, a fox." he continued, both ignoring and somehow answering her question.

"What's that got to do with anything? He'd my best friend and all I've got left."

"Is that why you meet Sasuke every month, spend two days with him and have nothing but sex?" Gaara could have been commenting on the weather.

"What's it too you?" She turned back to the water fountain.

"You should find some one else." Gaara frowned, she'd gotten better at reading him, though it was a little hard… the lack of eyebrows…

"Oh really? Who? No one else is bothered."

"Kakashi is."

She snorted. "He's too much like Sasuke and he knows it, it'd just be replacing one for the other."

"Replacement isn't so bad. It _is_ why Sasuke is with you, you are too much of a mother and he just wants his family back"

"Shut up! Shutupshutupshutup!" Sakura pressed her hands over her ears.

Gaara smirked.

_ii._

"Good to see you again Kazekage." Kakashi lied smoothly.

"I wish I could say the same." Gaara muttered as his sand rattled around in its container somewhere behind him. "You still detest me Kakashi?"

"Somewhat?"

"You question it?"

"I know Naruto's affect on people, I don't know quiet which part of you too hate. The part that's right, the part that is Sasuke, or the part that is more then he'll ever be." Kakashi stepped away from the wall. More then Kakashi would ever be.

"She wants you, you know."

"Just as she wants you, why do you think she keeps volunteering to come on missions here?"

"Why do you think she always coming with you?"

They both stared down, away from each other and what they didn't have words for -- never enough words.

Kakashi strode forward too the desk, and leant over it. Watching as Gaara stiffened and his skin seemed that much more _real _as the sand shield slid around. Kakashi slid his head band up, dropped his head at the angle.

"Does it hurt Kazekage? You are not the boy you once were."

"No, I am a man then, I've got no time for grudges."

"Ah," Kakashi leaned that bit closer and wondered that on anyone else he could have seen the pulse fluttering on Gaara's neck as it was, he was protected -- Kakashi smirked. "Then that must be the part I hate. The part I couldn't get over."

Gaara leaned his head just a little to the right, still impassive. "Kakashi, you are just hating yourself then."

"I have been all my life Gaara, but that's the part she loves."

_ii. _

"Well that was a successful mission wasn't it Kakashi-sensei?" she smiled at him.

Kakashi cast a look at Sakura, that frightful spring in her step.

"Sakura" he muttered.

"Yes?" her hands twisted around the edge of her gloves and adjusting and readjusting -- from who? He wondered

"Why do you insist on calling me sensei? I was never a teacher to you." his voice low, and perhaps sadder and more regretful then he wanted but it got the intended effect.

The bounce in her stopped -- _thank god_ Kakashi still felt it was too early.

"Because its safest like that."

"You are a ninja, safe isn't what you applied for."

"No, it isn't but is it so _wrong_ to want just _something_?"

"No, its not wrong. Its _idiotic _to expect it too go unchallenged."

She took a breath. "What are you getting at?"

"Sasuke."

She frowned. "_That _isn't safe, what's it got to do with this conversation?"

"Gaara wants you. He will do whatever he can to get you."

She laughed. "Stop lying Kakashi, no one _wants_ me. You all need me." she subsided too giggles. "Because…" she giggled again, quieter, under her breath, "because _I _want to be needed so I make myself so."

"So you do this all deliberately?"

"I've been shaped by it, Kakashi-_sensei_, you, Sasuke, Gaara, Naruto you've all acted, needed me for something else. You need me because Gaara wants me and you want Gaara because he'll be what you never are. He _moved_ as sand does and you stay so still, _scarecrow,_ in the field as the sakura blossoms and wilts and is carried with the sand in the wind."

Kakashi cast his eyes down. "And still some how you want me just as much, because I'm evanescent, aren't I Kakashi? Even if its too death _I'm still moving_ and your so still." she sighed. "Perhaps it is time I let go of Sasuke… but, not yet. Not yet."

**to see**

_interlude:_

_act I._

_(Sakura stared as Sasuke crawled over her, into her and she gasped out when her climax hit her and her legs clenched and every single nerve _burned_. Her back arched and she moaned from her hoarse throat. _

"_Sasuke" she mumbled. "I'm pregnant." His panting into her neck stopped and he jerked up to look her in the eye. _

"_Liar"_

_She giggled, breathless, flushed and sweat slicked, she held his face. "You got me")_

_--_

_drowning is;_

**vorrò**

_iii._

"Gaara have you ever been free?"

"… yes. The few minutes after I died, and I knew, that nothing ever mattered anymore and I asked myself why, and I knew I couldn't care for the answer."

"Oh" she frowned. "I meant when you were alive?"

"…The first time I slept."

Sakura perked her head up "When?"

"… The battle with Naruto. It was so blissfully black, so completely empty and in that emptiness… I was free."

"But… but you were rampaging around… killing people, how could a sleep like that be peaceful?"

"I didn't care." His face was still blank, still empty and she knew he was remembering it -- relishing it. "In that dream of death, no words could come, no thought could break me,"

Eager to get away from what she didn't understand, she smiled. "I don't think I've ever been free and I've never had what I wanted."

"Have you ever been wanted?"

She smiled. "Yes."

"Ah. You know then?"

She smiled wider. "Do you want to kiss me Gaara?"

He seemed close then, she didn't know when he moved but to worry over details seemed stupid. His fingers pushed forcefully into her hair and her head tilted back. His voice was insane again, like she remember it, like she wanted it, how she's imagined Sasuke's would be when he'd make love to her. It hurt, more then his nails in her scalp, more then how he was pulling her hair.

"I want you, _I need you_"

Gaara didn't know how to kiss, but he _could _consume, like his sand did blood, he was hot and hard against her and she knew when she ran her hands down his chest it was all just sand, he never let that sand shield drop, not even for her.

She'd wish he'd push her up against the wall, be caught, but walls would never do, not for Gaara. Walls were just asking too be destroy, and Sakura hoped, he'd destroy her, a wilted blossom in the wind.

_iii._

"What did she taste like?" Kakashi leant against the wall, watching Gaara.

"Dirt" Gaara muttered. "How did you know?"

"She smelt of you, and she kept touching her lips, sighing"

Gaara snorted. "She tasted like memories, blood and dirt and sand and love." he frowned. "Love always tastes like the worst things."

"Do you know what she said you tasted like?"

Gaara raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

"She said you didn't taste much of anything," he paused. "I think she's lying."

"Why would she lie?"

"Because she doesn't want to want you, that would be betraying Sasuke, betraying herself and her dreams and perceived expectations."

Gaara frowned again. "She does that too much."

"What dream? She always has, but never for herself, always for someone else. She'll never stop, she's given too much of herself away, to him, to Naruto, to being shinobi, to us."

Gaara set the scroll he was holding down. "What do you want of this Kakashi?"

Kakashi paused, he could lie, he'd always lied, but for once he thought the truth would be funnier then the lie. "You, and her. I want her because you wants her. She's your shining light, your hope and retribution and the only chance you'll get of someone crying when you die again. She'll be better then Shukaku, you'll make better kills for her. But I want you, because you are what I'll never be."

Gaara paused. Then he might of smiled, if he'd been anyone else. Walking around his desk he stopped in front of Kakashi.

Kakashi pulled down his mask, Gaara was still, so still in front of him. Shorter it was true, so it was awkward, but Gaara's skin was as rough as Kakashi had imagined. He placed a kiss to his throat, his jaw and at last to his mouth, his hand fisting in Gaara's hair, and Gaara's own hand rose to rest on Kakashi's shoulder.

"She's right." Kakashi muttered "You don't taste of anything." He could feel Gaara's breath against his neck, smell the sand and the blood that never left, the memories that would not recede.

He pulled his mask up.

_iii._

Kakashi watched the way Sakura lay on the bed in her towel, water drying on her skin in the heat of the desert, pink hair fanned out on the pillow.

"You'd think they'd put air-con in here don't you?" Sakura mumbled, turning her head to face him, eyes lidded with the heavy air.

Kakashi wondered at how much of what was on her skin was sweat and how much was water.

"You don't look at me like you look at him Kakashi, any body else, there is a girl naked in a towel on a bed, they'd be trying to hide the bulge in their pants."

Kakashi was silent, staring but still not acting.

"What's wrong Kakashi, or do you _love_ Gaara that much?" she giggled, eyes slipping closed.

"Some things are better then lust Sakura, Gaara understands this." he murmured.

"I'm. not. Gaara" she might of hissed if not so languid and stilled by the heat.

He shook his head. "No, your still alive. Gaara's died and been resurrected, and I see life through a dead mans dreams."

She smiled, "Come Kakashi, feel alive with me?"

Her hand went to where the towel was tucked and fastened, she pulled it loose and off her, in nothing but her skin, the sunlight highlighted and danced around and across her thighs and breast and ducked in the tiny bumps of her collar bones.

"Gaara should be here…" Kakashi murmured, rising from where he resided to the bed. On all fours, knees by her hips and hands by her head. His shadow didn't fall on her.

"Smile for Kakashi, even dead boys smile,"

"Not Gaara," he murmured. "Not Gaara," He pressed his face into her neck, and smiled.

She sighed and pressed her fingers into his hair, naked and complete under him, totally bear but completely perfect, Sasuke was a all undeserving bastard for seeing her like this so frequently.

"Won't you kiss me Kakashi?"

He kissed her everywhere, except her mouth, he didn't want to know what Gaara had tasted.

**to want**

_Interlude_

_act ii._

_(Sakura is pressed against Kakashi, her back arches and she sighs, her arms reaching behind her to push her hands into Kakashi hair as he presses those kisses into her shoulder. Gaara's head is between her legs, his fingers digging into her hips hard enough to bruise and her toes curl, gasping with the effort to not think about anything apart from _them _and _this _and what she's always _needed_. _

"_This is better…" she murmurs. "Better then loving or dreaming or dreaming of love." )_

--

afterahardday


End file.
